Wednesday update :)
Picking up where we left off with Saya and the crew. Meanwhile, Tórir is on the move, inching closer toward his ultimate goal. Expect much angst and funeralizing. I've mentioned before, but the chapters in the France et al. arc are pretty heavy on the angst. Just a heads up to let y'all know. This will continue until Saya and Mr. Ginger T's storylines collide, in a pretty explosive way, in the final chapters of Act II.
Now on with the fic! Review, pretty please!
Metal cranes.
The airport runway is crowded with metal cranes. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Tórir watches their fantastic shapes. Bright flashes of red and white lights. Sweeping wings and angular bodies, with tails like the fins of sharks. Except they are larger than sharks. Larger even than whales, their bodies cutting at deafening velocity across the halogen-lit runway, breaking past the barrier of gravity before arrowing into the night sky.
Four o'clock a.m. Matchstick rays of pre-dawn light arc over the horizon. Day unfolding here, night descending elsewhere. A whole world of possibilities, each destination ticking by like on a board at the ticket counter. Tokyo. Beijing. Seoul. Jakarta. Istanbul. Paris. London. Edinburgh.
And Tórshavn. Capital of the Faroe Islands.
Home.
"You need anything Tórir?"
Tórir exhales with irritation. This is the fifteenth time that human—Carsten—has asked him that. Slumped like a dollop of pudding on the barstool at the executive lounge, his eyes keep skittering to Tórir's face. Like he doesn't know whether to drop to his knees in lust or in terror-struck adulation.
It has been that way since Tórir's attack on Jordan's guards. A reaction Tórir was accustomed to in another life, from men and women alike. It served him well during his days as a blodprinsen. It will serve him just as well here.
Yet he's forgotten how... tiresome the attention can be.
"I am fine," he says, elegantly clipped.
"Sure you don't want another drink?" Of blood, he means. "It's a long trip from Okinawa to the States."
"I will manage."
A pretty stewardess at the end of the lounge, ripe of form and fruity of scent, keeps giving Tórir the eye over the rim of her martini. Her attractive red uniform is from Cathay Pacific. The airline that Tórir and Carsten will be boarding. Tórir has no doubt, if the journey grinds on interminably, that a sweet assignation can be arranged—with blood taken from her jugular in the form of a love-bite.
There is no need for carnage during the journey.
Plenty of time for that afterward.
Afterward, when he has Saya in his sightlines. Their last battle—an impulse of fascination on his part—ended in stalemate. Or, if he is honest, a close shave.
But it gave him what he wanted.
A few dropfuls of her blood, rich as rubies. Not too much. While not as potent as the Blue Queen's blood, her daughters carry strains of the same toxicity that can crystallize a Red Queen's 'Chevalier.' In Tórir's case, it can debilitate him, but not kill him—so long as he doesn't overindulge.
He did not take Saya's blood as indulgence. He took it for knowledge.
Because inside her blood was a knothole of memories. He'd stared at that knothole, a dark blot spiderwebbing into the heart of her, until he fell into it.
Inside was pure chaos. A psyche dragged across space and time, forced to confront barbarity and bloodshed, death and deceit. The world he'd seen, her world, was entrancing. Chilling. Massacres in Vietnam. Manhunts in Russia. Journeys on trains and ships and planes. Foes decimated, friendships lost, family slaughtered. And at the forefront, burning bright as a star, Diva.
Diva, the Blue Queen to Saya's Red.
The sister she had killed with her own hands.
Tórir cannot fathom such a feat. Yet the more he turns it over, like a gem between his fingers, each memory a facet caught in the light, the more convinced he becomes of the rightness of his return to this world.
He is here to lure away the little Red Queen from her path down a life of human delusion. To restore her to where she belongs.
On his leash, as the perfect weapon.
And once he has unlocked that hellfire in her, stoked it and unleashed it to his purpose...
Ah, what glory will befall his reign! The deadliest of natural disasters at his beck and call, slaughtering and savaging, while humans heap tributes at his feet for a chance to harness her power. Because here, as anywhere, power is the only language that the living speak, and the only lesson the dead have failed to heed.
Of course, the transfer of power never did run smooth. (Is his mind paraphrasing Shakespeare? Someone he supped from must have unplumbed depths. Saya herself, perhaps?) Patience and planning are required to get where he needs to.
Tórir is undaunted. Patience and planning are two skills he's honed in abundance, though never at the detriment of his adventurous streak.
Like all else, it will serve him well in the months ahead.
"Say, Tórir?"
He comes back to the moment with a blink. "What?"
Carsten pops a handful of sugared pecans into his mouth. "I'm curious. About your powers."
"What about them?"
"Can you… well. Can you really gain knowledge by drinking someone's blood?"
"It is not so simple." Tórir takes a sip of his water. No alcohol for him—then as now. He prefers nothing to soften under his pleasant demeanor the sharp hatreds with which he's so adept at stabbing others. "It is more like a fingerprint. A marker of everything that comprises the other person. Memory, personality, preference."
"And only Chiropter—I mean, only Blodfødt have the gift?"
"Yes. It is strongest among Queens. But their Chevaliers—the blodprinsen—inherit the gift."
"But what's the point of the ability? From a biosocial standpoint, I mean?" Carsten crams another handful of pecans into his mouth. How can he eat that sugary rubbish? His exhalations already carry a fermented tinge that Tórir associates with people developing diabetes. "See, from what you told me, Blodfødt are smart creatures, right? They valued privacy as much as anyone. So why risk exposure with a sip of blood?"
"A strategy of adaptation. Learning a language. Acquiring a skill. Becoming assimilated to a new world." He indicates to himself, a non-verbal Exhibit A. "The Blodfødt are shapeshifters. Their defining strategy is to blend in. For Queens, it proves useful after each hibernation. A drink from her blodprinsen would provide the requisites to adjust to a new environment. And by taking knowledge from a human's blood, she would know their languages and beliefs—and insinuate herself accordingly."
"Huh. Sneaky little bitches."
"They are." He offers the beginnings of a thin smile. "Sneaky—and selfish. They care only for themselves, and their realm. And they go to catastrophic lengths to protect it."
"Catastrophic?"
"I once knew a Queen. She butchered an entire village to keep pestilence out of her demesne. Another who strung servants upside-down, dripping their blood into a trough as punishment for treason. Queens were skilled in the arts of warfare—but also more secret subterfuges like poisons. They studied herbs as gateways to religious trances, sexual ecstasy, fighting prowess—and death. Many kept sages, mages and midwives at their disposal, to unlock the lore of nature, and use it to subjugate mankind."
"Whoa. That's. I dunno. Feminazi on Steroids or something."
Tórir does not recognize the reference. No matter. He can google it.
"So... blood-sharing between the Blodfødt," Carsten continues. "Was it a strategy for bonding? Telepathy as an extension of empathy, almost?"
"Somewhat. Between Queens and blodprinsen, it was a pledge of fealty. Strengthening over time. Two hundred years or more would develop the first stirrings of the gift. But most would not master it until at least three centuries or so."
"But you have."
The barest smile. "I have lived longer than three centuries."
Carsten seems on the verge of asking, So how old are you? But the glint in Tórir's eyes makes him think better of it. He resumes chomping on the pecans.
Tórir watches him with veiled distaste. Carsten is clever and useful, but he has the self-control of a pig. It amuses Tórir to consider the man that way: that porcine coat of meat pared down and hung on a hook. Salted. Pickled. Boiled.
He isn't unique among his kind, of course. Most of the humans Tórir sees are the bloblike summation of their time. Short concentration spans. Sugary diets. A naivety born of sedentary ways. They learn their lessons not in sea-voyages or battlefields but from tiny screens. Living, as it were, in a vacuum—until a catastrophe wrenches them out of it.
Tórir will revel in being that catastrophe.
"Carsten." It is a bored prompt. "Tell me something."
Carsten jolts to attention. "Yeah?"
"The 'access agent' our financiers spoke of. He was a prisoner?"
"Once. Initially he was held at the ICC's detention center in the Hague. After they gave him a thirty-year sentence, he was sent to France to serve it out." Carsten swallows a gulpful of beer. It gives his breath an unsavory, piss-like whiff. "He's spent time in La Santé. Fifteen years—not the full thirty. Turns out he had friends in high places. A few of them pulled strings to get him good legal representation."
"Hm."
"After his release, he started a Biopharma company in Las Vegas. Silver Corp, they're called. They have a respectable board-of-directors. A photogenic female CEO. FDA approval. Everything's legit. But our contact is the real string-puller. He works as a shadow partner. Doing business with global clients, as a way to circumvent regulatory bodies. IBM-UAWA have tapped into his services in the past—mostly for clinical trials."
"And he was a student of your mentor?"
"A long time ago. But they still keep in touch. We could use him. He's got the smarts—and experience—we need to finalize our project."
"Hmm." Tórir mulls this over a languid sip of water. Then: "Our lookouts. They said we have clearance for a few weeks, yes? While Red Shield is in disrepair."
"Yeah. Their leader, Joel Goldschmidt, just died of heart trouble. With him out of commission, the organization will be too distracted to keep all eyes open. At least 'till they get a replacement."
"And Saya and her family. They will stay overseas."
"Yeah. A few days, at least. Maybe longer. Our agents will let us know."
"Hm."
Tórir tucks away this piece of information with mild interest. Travel leaves the prey vulnerable.
And movement, the precursor of opportunity, is all he needs.
"Saya?"
The cool flirt of fingertips.
"Sayaaaa? Wakey, wakey."
"Mmm."
Her eyes flutter open. Pale light is all around, suffusing her with a skin-tingling warmth. She feels in a place outside of time—yet right where she belongs.
Her bedroom, at the villa. Blue daylight pours in through the stained-glass windows. Blue roses are clustered around the wooden frame.
Home.
I'm home?
Home, but not alone. She is tucked up in bed with someone, snug as two babies in a cradle.
In the glow, Diva's face hovers close, smiling down at her, her long hair dangling to brush her skin.
"Wake up, lazy bones," she says. "It's almost noon."
Dream, Saya thinks. I'm dreaming.
Except it never helps to know that she is. Sitting up and yawning, her face caught in a perfect reflection of Diva's, their bodies effortlessly mirroring each other, the rightness of the moment settles in. Reality never feels as perfect as dreams. It never hurts so piercingly.
"Finally!" Diva bounces in bed, vibrating with excess energy. "You promised to wake up early! We were gonna go shopping with Sayumi and Sayuri!"
"Shopping…?"
"For the baby shower!" The trademark little-sister eyeroll. "Don't tell me you forgot!?"
"What?" A baby shower? For whom? "I-I didn't think it was today."
"Duh! When else?" Diva gives her the stink-eye. "You didn't oversleep because of Haji, did you?"
"Um…"
Saya's face heats to a ferocious pink. Diva lets off an Ah-ha! and dissolves into laughter.
Saya blinks. The uncanniness of the scene keeps reshaping, moment by moment. She's heard that spilled-champagne laughter before. The sound has always made badness flare inside her. Memories of blood and fire and filth.
This is different. Diva is the same, her flighty personality intact. But everything else is changed. Her white dress isn't an Ophelia-esque shroud but a stylish little frock, Issey Miyake maybe. She also has dangly teardrop earrings and a tiny diamond wristwatch, and her complexion, still a few shades paler than Saya's, is nonetheless toasty. Tropical-tan.
Stranger still is the sweetness shining off her. Both of them sitting up in bed, knees touching and their heads close enough that their long hair tangles like spiderwebs, a frozen moment whose surrealism should be paralyzing.
It isn't.
It is no stranger than the affection welling inside Saya. Or the eight-month baby bump stretching her pajama top. Its warm weight, like Diva's presence, is an anchor.
Saya touches her sister's hand, and smiles. "I'm sorry I overslept. Really. The shopping slipped my mind."
Diva shakes her head. "I forgive you. You're just making up for lost time with Haji, right? When is he flying out on tour? Next week?"
"Mm." Sadness is a brief downtug at Saya's mouth. She shakes it off. "I'll be fine. Plenty to keep me busy. Between decorating the nursery and college classes and helping Kai at Omoro…"
"And you promised to cheer me on at my next concert," Diva reminds her.
"I did." Then, mock-scolding: "But this time, I refuse to sit in the back row. Your fans nearly mobbed me!"
Diva pouts. "It's not my fault we look alike!"
"It is your fault for putting me in the nosebleed section."
"That was Nathan's idea! He said the acoustics were better!"
"My ears are fine!"
"You coulda fooled me," Diva grumbles. "I've been trying to wake you for the past hour." A sly little moue. "I'm not sure if I should kick Haji—or ask for pointers."
Saya laughs. "I'll be sure to tell Solomon that."
"Do," Diva huffs. "And while you're at it, tell him he's a woogie, wriggly worm. Promising to be there for my birthday, then slinking off to Monte Carlo to gamble the night away with flunkies and floozies a-a-and carry out other F-related acts of wrongness!"
"Oh, Diva. It's not his fault the flight was delayed."
"Well: hello! He's got wings of his own. He could've flown here!"
"Monaco to Okinawa? For seventeen hours straight?' Saya quirks a brow. "Your birthday would be over by the time he arrived. If he didn't drop from heat-exhaustion somewhere in China."
"It's the principle of the thing!" Diva's petulance conceals the hurt beneath. "He never drops everything at a moment's notice and swoops in to see me. Not like Haji does with you!"
"Oh Diva…" Saya softens with sympathy. "That's not true. He cares about you very much."
"I care about him too! What I don't do is make a lifestyle out of hiding behind fabricated business meetings or furniture!"
Saya lets off a sigh. "Commitment can be scary. Some men rise to the occasion. Others need time to process it—"
"Under a table?!"
"Better than a guillotine."
"Don't tempt me," Diva mutters. "If he skips out on our engagement party—"
"If he does, he'll face in-law hell of the highest order," Saya says.
She's very fond of Solomon. But his stormy relationship with Diva, defined by passionate patching-ups and fickle fallouts, needs to be addressed. She and Haji don't mind keeping Diva at the villa during their temporary separations, plying her with tissue papers and hugs and retail-therapy. But her twin deserves better—especially after the fiasco with Amshel, that suitor-turned-Svengali.
Bastard, Saya thinks, and the clarity of rage merges her two selves, reality and dream, into one.
Gently, she strokes the loose fall of Diva's hair. "Let's not worry about Chevaliers right now. Have you had breakfast?"
"No." Diva doles out a Pity Me pout. "I was waiting for you to get up."
Sticky with big-sister guilt, Saya shoos her out and showers on record speed. They rejoin in the sunlit kitchen, eggs frying and tea percolating, moving around each other with the same dancelike grace as when they'd fought at the Met a lifetime ago. Their communication flows and eddies—plans for the day, gossipy tidbits, international politics, the latest Marvel movie. The room's emotional acoustic is mellow with a sisterly cheer that at any other time would make Saya wonder if she's had an aneurism, or ingested a peyote, or otherwise fallen off the end of the universe and into an alternate dimension.
The Land of Soap Opera Saccharine, a parallel universe to the bitter black coffee of Real Life.
Yet, as she and Diva sit at the kitchen island, tea steaming above and feet dangling below, Saya smiles. The morning savors of the ordinary. Diva's company, like the hugeness of her belly, eases within her every lost molecule of longing, every spilled tear and empty silence, that she's never dared to put into words.
"…I was thinking, after the babies are born, we could head to Iriomote Island, with Sayumi and Sayuri," Diva says. "Just us girls. I took scuba diving lessons last year. We could explore the coral reef together. Pet all those colorful fishies. Solomon's promised to take me to the Great Barrier Reef for the honeymoon. I performed at the Sydney Opera House last year, but I never…"
Saya's smile widens. Everything about Diva, from the benign blueness of her eyes to the gloss of her mirth-rounded cheeks, is adorable and evokes love. And yet Saya finds herself searching her twin's face, as if scanning for some difference: a mole, a scar, an irregular line, that will make the scene transform, so the perfection of the morning is reduced to an illusion.
She doesn't trust the pure luster of her happiness. Not without it coexisting, hour by hour, with darker shades of loss.
"…Ray Lawler's Doll Trilogy…" Diva chirps, "…Witchetty grubs and Barramundi afterward… Better than it looks, if you're hungry…"
A wave of cold uncertainty seeps into Saya. The cheerful kitchen darkens. The shafts of sunlight break into misshapen splotches, like a jigsaw puzzle falling apart. Her head pounds, inky shapes and menacing sensations gathering force in her brain, so the very air of the room descends into a chill.
"…white chocolate truffles…" Diva is saying, "…red velvet cake… red stains… old blood… rotting bodies…"
The music of Diva's voice has gone deathly soft. The words pour from her like snakes, heavy and cold, the consonants curving with the sheen of scales. Then it is an actual snake, sliding out from the red loop of her mouth. It slithers down Diva's chin, its eyes unslitting, liquid blue.
"Vietnam... Russia... Paris... and the moon goes red... and the pain eats you alive..."
Saya stares at the snake, tranced by the infernal familiarity of it. Red mist is massing at the corners of her eyes. Inside her, the barrier of credulity starts to collapse.
She fights to preserve it—she doesn't want the dream to end. Doesn't want to be parted from this mirage of happiness, where her intimacy with Diva is everlasting.
But it's too late.
Diva's voice has dropped to alien wavelengths—a pitch of decibels the living could never speak. Her skin moves, the bones beneath flattening, her eyes shrinking. Saya watches her twin's features erode as if beneath a dusting of quicklime. Left behind is an unformed shape, its surface fracturing into cobweb cracks.
From the dark orifice of the mouth, the snake uncoils to its full length, rising eerily.
"Saya." It is a sizzle, blood on brimstone. "Wake up, Saya."
The colors of the room are inverting. Black and white transposing into red. The tiles are speckled with it, blood dripping from between Saya's thighs in wet splats. Her big belly deflates into an expanse of curdled blood, sloshing around her like a nacre around a rusting nail.
"No," Saya croaks, hot blood rising to lap at her chest, her throat, her chin. "No."
"Wake up, Saya."
"No. Please, no—"
The blood pours into her mouth, words gurgling into panic, and—
"Saya."
She lurches awake. Her hair is glued to her skin with sweat. Haji's fingertips are cool on her cheek, his face close to hers. The taste in her mouth isn't blood, but bile.
Sucking in a breath, Saya glances around. She is on the private jet. The lights are low, the passengers asleep. The windows show a pre-dawn sky. A circle of dark, a hazy pink streak of horizon, a circle of light.
"Saya." Haji kneels beside her, laying a cool hand on her forehead. "Are you all right?"
"I—"
The words stall as she speeds to outrace her thoughts. The dream has faded beyond recall. Not the eerie portent of her usual conversations with Diva. This was no more than reheated leftovers from her psyche. Yet the clamminess of blood remains.
She fumbles with her seatbelt. "I need the bathroom."
Wordlessly, Haji helps her to her feet. She glances at him, half-expecting to see a glaze of weariness in his eyes. Weariness with her madness, her moodiness, and the misadventures she drags along in her wake.
Stop it.
Now isn't the time for her stupid emotions to run wild. Better to concentrate on Joel's funeral, and on the potential threat brewing.
Yet her heart skips and relaxes when Haji cups the knob of her elbow. In the rosy dawn spreading bittersweetly through the cabin, he regards her with a clear-eyed calm. The budding sunlight catches in his eyelashes, the scarred jut of cheekbone and brow. A face changed by time, yet familiar as the map of home.
Mine, mine, mine.
He guides her towards the narrow toilet cubicle, opening the door without sound. She gives him another quick glance, then shuts herself in.
The bathroom is claustrophobically tiny. Sink, toilet, changing table, all lit by a wan light. Saya knows she is going to vomit even before the acidic stuff spews up her mouth to splatter the basin. Rinsing off, she splashes her face with water, and drinks some between her cupped palms. She thinks of Joel, and their last phone conversation.
"Hopefully …we can take a turn through the Zoo's grounds together."
It is too late now.
The tears come unstoppably. She waits until they subside, before dabbing her face dry. Her emotions are unmoored: sad one moment, frozen-up the next. Not all of it has to do with Joel's death. The strangeness has been coalescing inside her since the Awakening.
Madness—possession?—doesn't explain everything.
When she reemerges from the toilet, Haji is leaning by the bulkhead, arms folded. "All right?"
She nods, not meeting his eyes.
"Are you hungry? There are sandwiches in the back."
"I'm fine."
For once, the emptiness in her belly isn't hunger, but restlessness. When Haji gestures to their seat, she shakes her head. She yearns for exercise. But short of cartwheeling down the aisle and putting a foot through the cockpit door, there is nothing she can do.
Instead, she regards the sleeping passengers.
In the expansive leather seats, they seem under a somnolent spell. David and Julia, looking like a married-couple from an old 50s movie, are stretched out in their lie-flat beds: David on his back, with his hands folded across his chest; Julia half-sitting up with a book in her lap, its spine cracked, her glasses and David's wristwatch on the small table between them. Dee, Ezra and Adam are huddled in the three-seater opposite to them, wheat-colored heads lolling at awkward angles, the low lighting reducing their faces to innocent snubness.
On the table beyond, Kai snoozes. A neck-cushion serves as a pillow for his cheek; his brow is nestled on one muscular forearm, the fingers loosely curled into a fist. From this angle, he looks seventeen again. The ace pitcher at high-school, with the brash mouth and mean right-hook, who'd followed his little sister halfway around the world to keep her safe.
Sayumi and Sayuri doze on either side of him. Sayumi, half-kitten, half-child, despite her sultry Delilah curls and chipped red nail polish, is curled into a ball under her blanket, little paws folded against her chin. Yuri, daintily demure even in sleep, has both hands in her lap, knees crossed at the ankles in a Duchess Slant.
Their Chevaliers are wide-awake, but motionless. Sachi, with his shoes doffed and plugs in his ears, sits cross-legged in the seat in the way that only a compact gymnast can achieve. He is industriously working on a book of crossword puzzles. Beside him, V headbangs to rock-and-roll on his headphones, drumming out a subdued fanfare on his kneecaps.
The scene, heavy with familial repose, restores Saya to normality.
I'm with my family.
I'm safe.
Whatever the downpour of strangeness and tragedy, it is always a relief.
She rests against the wall opposite to Haji. "How long until we arrive?"
"A few minutes. Red Shield has a small entourage stationed to greet us at the airport."
"And the funeral?"
"It will be held tomorrow morning. Afterward, there will be a meeting with the seconds-in-command."
"To discuss succession." She plucks restlessly at the hem of her blouse. "I wonder who it will be. Franz—Joel's eldest—he's next in line, isn't he?"
"He has stated that he is uninterested."
She bites her lip. "So that leaves Joel's next choice. His cousin, August. Have you met him?"
"No. From what I hear, he is clever. But he has also been divorced from Red Shield for several years."
"Well, hopefully he remembers his duty as a Shield. Joel asked me to support him if—" She stops, a spasm of grief closing off the words.
"Saya."
Haji's fingers twine through hers. He draws her into the bridged clasp of their bodies.
This time, unlike at Omoro, she lets herself be held. Lets him smooth her hair back from her forehead, and drop a kiss there. A waft of his scent—soap, rosin, the musky cloak from hours of travel—suffuses her lungs. She draws in a slow breath of it. Wishing they were together on the cool raft of a bed, floating away from their troubles.
Wishing, too, that there were no troubles at all, and that she'd stayed with Haji in Okinawa, going on having herself a little honeymoon. A chance to focus on nothing except romps along the beach and waking to drifts of cello notes and the enticing aroma of coffee and the butterflied coolness of Haji's kisses.
Reality has already encroached on her illusion. Exposing its impossibility.
"I can hear you thinking," Haji whispers.
Saya manages a smile. His insights always glance too close to the surface; an accuracy as disconcerting as it is comforting. "A terrible habit for a woman. Isn't that what Joel used to say?"
"Our Joel or the last?"
"Ours." Her smile fades. "The last... was nothing like that."
"He was a good man."
"Maybe that's why he died young."
Haji's eyes are ineffably gentle. "If survival were a purity test, Saya, most of us would be gone."
"Including me?"
"I will not think of that." His forehead warms itself against hers. "I hope you do not, either."
"I try not to. Just—" Her chest constricts. "I think of the normal life Joel could've had. Not just him. Everyone. They're all wrapped up in the Mission because of my mistakes. If things were different—"
"Sssh."
Haji encompasses her closer. Goosebumps form on her nape where he strokes it. His fingers, for all their chill, are gentle with intimacy. It is like being by herself only better, the skies of her mind clearing and the world dropping away: a high-jump, a hope-spot.
A glass half-full.
"Why is it…" she whispers.
"Hm?"
"Why is this the only thing that calms me?"
"I am glad something does," he says simply.
The words pass through her on a gust of gratitude. There it is again. The sense that he is rightfully hers, even in a life where nothing comes without a price. Looking back on the war, she remembers her bedrock solitude, as if he'd never been by her side at all. But other times, especially after the Met bombing, she'd look at her circle of comrades, and realize it was just a barely-legal brother, a no-nonsense handler, a glamorous glass mannequin of a doctor, an ex-CIA op with an appetite for apple-pie, an orphaned little Schiff girl, and Haji would fill her thoughts completely, a dark outline of familiarity and a whisper before a firestorm: I love you.
In those moments, she understands that they were never apart in the war. They were Together like the sea and the sky are together, a natural seamlessness that nothing can separate.
In her ear, Diva says, But is it enough?
Saya flinches.
"Still thinking," Haji whispers.
She forces a smile. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry?"
"I wish I could've come to you a little less …cracked."
Haji folds her closer, and her ear is kissed by the coolness of his lips. "Cracks can heal."
"What if they don't?"
"I would not begrudge them." He gestures to the scarred solemnity of his face. "You have never begrudged mine."
Tears blur Saya's eyes. It takes a handful of breaths to gather herself. "S-Subject change."
"All right."
"The scouts in Okinawa. Have they found any trace of that Chevalier?"
"Not yet. They will send us a report once we've landed."
She nods. For a moment, she sees again the glowing blue eyes and the shape of one huge fist, exploding pain through her sinews like an atom bomb.
"We have not finished, but barely begun."
Who was that monster? What did he want with her?
And why did she feel no alarm at the thought of him, but inevitability?
"Saya?"
"Hm?"
Haji's expression sits carefully-composed. But a disquiet deepens the hollows of his eyes. "I had hoped we could talk. Not just about the Chevalier. Before that. About what Nathan told you."
She blinks. In the haste of their departure, she'd nearly forgotten.
"Saya, you should let Julia examine that tincture. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Nathan is misleading you. There is no way—"
And just like that, the residual anger bubbles up.
"Is that what you think? Or what you hope I'll think?"
He flinches, but doesn't fold. "There is no rational reason for Nathan to—"
She jerks out of his arms. "What if it's true? It would be a wasted chance if we let it slip away."
"A wasted chance. Or a foolish mistake. Saya, in light of everything, it is unwise to—"
"If this is more arguments ending with how I don't know my own mind, and need to be handled with care, I don't want to hear it."
"Please do not put words in my mouth." He lets off a muted sigh. "It is true you have not been yourself of late. But whatever is… unsettled… inside you, children will not remedy it."
"So you're psychic now?" Anger make a tremble of her voice. She isn't sure whether this metaphoric glass is half-full or half-empty. But she knows that with Haji's every refusal, it is cracking. She feels the agony of each crack, a fistful of shards welling blood, and conceals it beneath the ire that comes from long practice. "Or are you just too cowardly to take the risk?"
"It is the risk to you that concerns me." The earnest pleading of his stare half-blinds her. "Saya, I am not dismissing the idea in its entirety. I am simply asking you to postpone it. Until a better time."
"Is there ever a better time?!"
"Saya—"
"Please. If this means anything to you at all, you would understand we'd be better for it. I would."
She hopes the plea will bribe him into acceptance. Except she knows him, and she knows his stubbornness isn't without cause. He is a pragmatist, a survivor, a self-protective sentinel who never takes unnecessary risks.
Their history is already rife with risk. Even with the boon of thirty years, children can't negate over a century of warfare. It can't erase the double-spiral of trauma and self-sacrifice they've trapped each other inside. They need time, patience, peace. They need stability after the nightly whipsawings between vitriol and violence. They need to learn how to live together. How to love, not as fighters but as equals.
She understands all this.
And yet nine-tenths of her just …wants.
Silence stretches between them, submerged with the conflicts in their bodies, and the harsh dialogue of their eyes. Stalemate. Standoff.
Then something in Haji's expression shifts. Not surrender, exactly, but a softening.
"Saya," he begins. "I—"
Above, the seatbelt sign comes on. The pilot announces that they are beginning their descent to the Roissy Airport.
Paris.
L'église de la Madeleine,
75008 Paris, France
Saya's memory of Paris is bittersweet-verging-on-bitter.
She remembers the way the rays of predawn sunlight struck the skyline, illuminating the splendid stretch of gabled roofs, spires, and domes in centuries' worth of history: Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Classic. She remembers the glass pyramid of the Louvre, the brooding hulk of Notre Dame, the quintessentially quaint rows of the Left Bank cafes.
And she remembers other things. The shabby flat Red Shield had rented near la Goutte d'Or. The Schiff's ambush. Irene spasming to death with screams. The shopping trip with Kai and Riku. The attack on Red Shield's ship—the one that had cost Joel his legs. Cost them their headquarters, cost Riku his life, and the lives of countless others.
That day, something had shattered their world, a percussive storm that shook its very foundations. And in a spiraling rush, they were swept apart, their minds and bodies scarred and changed in the aftermath.
But still alive, she thinks.
Scarred, changed—we're still here.
That was why they'd fought so hard. That was why Joel, even robbed of his mobility, never gave up on the Mission.
They drive down together in Red Shield's town car. Saya sits between Yuri and Yumi in the enclosed silence of the backseat. Headache throbs in her brainstem; she drags in deep lungfuls of air through the half-rolled windows.
It is a damp, cool morning. Last night had wrung out rainfall: the sky is blanketed in gray-edged clouds, the sun barely visible. The city seems to hang suspended between dreams.
Awkwardly, Saya shifts in her seat. She has borrowed one of Yuri's outfits for the ceremony—a Mary Quant-style shift, with seamed stockings and pointed-toe heels. She hates the ensemble: too modish, too starched. But at least it is in black.
"Thank you," she whispers to Yuri. "I should've gotten something from a store. But the idea of shopping…"
"Don't worry about it." Yuri squeezes her hand. "At times like this, the little details always trip you up."
"I dunno why it matters," Yumi says. "I'm sure Joel-san saw her in worse during the war."
"This isn't a war," Yuri says gently. "It's his farewell."
Yumi frowns in belated understanding.
The service is held at the church of La Madeleine. Through the car window, the tall building makes a doleful ascent into view. Neo-Classically splendid with Corinthian columns, it nonetheless shows in daylight the erosion of decades, its grand design crumbling into ruin.
The rest of the mourners have already arrived. Clumps of darkly-clothed men and women make their way slowly up the stairs. Joel's family and friends—and their security details. Joel was a shrewd networker: his social circle ran the gamut from businessmen, civil servants and war-heroes, to politicians, intelligence agents and arms dealers. Each person peripherally involved in Red Shield's day-to-day operations, kept in the loop about the Chiropteran threat.
What will happen without him? Saya wonders. Will they keep supporting Red Shield?
The expedient self-absorption makes her cringe. Sometimes she thinks there were advantages to simply being a monster-slayer for an organization. It kept your thoughts on matters not to do with the organization at all.
Once they are parked, Haji hands her out, courteous as a chauffeur. As soon as she's on her feet, Saya retracts her hand with the same formality.
After their talk on the plane, she doesn't want to touch him. Yet the subdued concern in his face takes the edge off her anger. Whatever their differences, he is always soldier-on-his-post steady when it comes to her well-being. Always keeping his priorities on the straight-and-narrow.
On her.
"Are you all right?" he asks.
"Mmm."
"David says we will convene at Les Ambassadeurs afterward. To discuss the teams' findings in Okinawa. And the results of the blood sample."
"I see."
He hesitates. "Are you certain you are fine? You seem very pale."
"Headache."
"Would you prefer to—"
"I'm okay." She squares her shoulders. "Let's go."
Inside, the church is jam-packed. Joel's mahogany casket is unadorned except for elegant wreaths of lilies. Next to it is a large framed photo. Joel in his last years: dignified and handsome, the sideburns silvered but the hair still full and dark. His blue eyes seem to twinkle into Saya's.
Wincing, Saya looks away. She feels her own smallness in the high-ceilinged church. The rosette motifs and wafts of incense from the thuribles stir up half-buried memories of another funeral, after the Bordeaux Sunday.
It was just her and Haji then. Yet the atmosphere is uncannily alike. She looks around at the faces of the mourners, but because of the gloom, and the starkness of the wide-spaced chandeliers, all she can see is a black-washed mass with glints of eyes. It is eerie.
Then Haji's hand covers hers. Their fingers fold together. He squeezes gently, and something inside Saya teeters between winter and the first green peep of spring.
Inhaling, she finds the strength to look ahead.
The memorial service is deeply unreal. The Goldschmidt clan, carefully secular since Saya's days at the Zoo, have always eschewed religion. But Joel's wife is a staunch Catholic. There is a Requiem Mass, and an Absoute with incense and holy water, hymns sung and eulogies spoken, all with a sense of reluctant obligation.
At Saya's left, David mutters, "He'd hate this."
"Hate it?"
"The formality. The fuss." His face is a study of strained neutrality. "The chief always said that when his time came, we should skip the ritualizing. Give him a low-key sendoff, then focus on what matters."
"The Mission," Saya whispers.
"Yes." His eyes meet hers, their sharp gleam undimmed despite the shadows under his eyelids. "Red Shield may or may not survive the coming weeks, Saya. But our purpose remains the same. We're here to help you."
"You think there's danger brewing."
"My gut says yes."
"So does mine." She swallows. "We've survived worse. But with Joel gone, it feels like—a countdown's begun. Like there's some limit of fortitude we've reached."
"Nothing lasts forever," David says. "And nothing stays the same. Not the way we fight. Or the way we cope. Sometimes we're more resilient when touched by crisis. Other times it's like reaching a mental threshold. The end of a hard journey." Determination shades his gaze. "That just means the start of another. At every point, we're becoming stronger."
Becoming.
A shiver passes through Saya. David's words are a bitter pill to be swallowed, but they are a good and restorative bitter. A fact of life. He doesn't have Haji's patient perception into what makes her tick—who does?—but his pragmatism always conceals beneath a well-meaning insight.
She values it, as she values his presence. One of the many anchors, like Haji, like Kai, like Julia, who keep her grounded.
"I hope we survive this new 'journey'," she says. "It will be hard without Joel."
"But impossible without you," David says, and the corner of his mouth twitches in an almost-smile.
Saya offers a wan smile in return. It is the closest all that day she comes to weeping.
After the service, there is a slow procession of cars to Père Lachaise Cemetery. The place is airy and tranquil, weak sunlight ghosting off the trees. The grave is waiting, a rectangular hole in the grass, the tombstone perfectly-etched with a simple epitaph.
_ Goldschmidt VI
His works were fortitude, his deeds were love.
Yumi and Yuri, flanking Saya, squeeze her shoulders as the priest begins the Rite of Committal. Joel's widow and three children stand off to the side. Saya remembers their names from the phonecall with Joel. Franz, the eldest, a replica of Joel but with sunken eyes and stubbled cheeks. Emile and Alice, Joel's two daughters, pretty as water-paintings. And Célia, Joel's wife—attractively patrician and absolutely devasted.
She sobs all through the priest's verses of scripture, breathing with hitching gasps into her handkerchief. When they lower the coffin into the earth, she breaks into a wail, and the sound of it echoes off the treetops and grave-markers. Franz and her daughters shush her, but nothing helps. Her grief is inconsolable.
Not grief.
Rage.
"Twenty-five years!" she shrieks, cutting off the priest. "Twenty-five years of happiness, and he threw it away for a life of Hell."
"Madame," the priest winces. "Please—"
She breaks away from her children, sinking to her knees at the gravesite. "Twenty-five years and I'm left with nothing of him!"
"Maman—" Franz hurries forward, grabbing her shoulders. "Please don't do this!"
"There's nothing left! They took everything! His entire life! All those monsters claiming to fight monsters in turn!"
"Maman, no—!"
She jerks off her son's hands. Her eyes dart around, the whites showing like a spooked animal's. Then they alight on Saya, and the misery spasms into wrath. "You!"
She rises clumsily, warding off Franz's attempts, and flings herself at Saya. Haji and David catch at her simultaneously. Around them, the mourners whisper and stare.
"You began this!" Célia snarls. "You're the reason it all started! He always put you on a damned pedestal! Jeanne d'Arc with a bloodstained sword!"
"Please, that's enough!" Franz encircles her waist. "You promised you wouldn't make a scene. Think of what father would say—"
"It's thanks to her that he can say nothing at all!" Her mouth curdles, eyes blazing into Saya's. "It's all because of you! Always the Mission! Always Red Shield! It consumed his entire life! There was room for nothing else!"
"Madame—" Saya's heart races. Her face is hot with shame.
"So many men hollowed out in your service," Célia sobs. "So many fighters fallen for your cause. Yet you've saved more than you've killed. That's the worst of all! I must be thankful to my husband's own murderer!"
"Mama!"
"I'm sorry," Saya whispers. "I didn't mean to cause you harm—"
"You have harmed me." Fury pours off Célia and into the washed-out cemetery. "You have hurt my family. My children and my husband. Even if he never breathed a word of complaint, your actions have always harmed him."
Saya opens her mouth, then closes it. In the face of the other woman's despair, there is nothing she can say.
"Please, Mama." Franz draws her back. Emile and Alice come forward, taking her by either arm, murmuring soothingly as they guide her away. Celia's shoulders shake, her rage burnt out and leaving her collapsed into sobs. If not for her daughters propping her up, she'd fall to the ground.
The priest hurriedly finishes the prayers. The rite concludes with those gathered reciting the Notre Père. Saya mouths the words by rote. Her heart buzzes and her skin burns: sorrow shot through with remorse. Maybe it was wrong of her to come here? Wrong to intrude on the privacy of Joel's family, her very presence stirring up decades of disaster.
Célia's accusations... she knows them too well. Joel, Riku, George, Elizaveta, Miss Clara, hundreds of others—they would all be alive, except for the truth of them.
Then Yumi butts up against her, gently supportive without words. On her other side, Yuri passes an arm around her, squeezing tight. Swallowing, Saya glances from one girl to the other, showing gratitude with just her eyes.
Her nieces... they wouldn't exist either, but for the fact of the war.
When the ceremony is over, the mourners disperse. Two graveyard workers with a backhoe begin filling in the grave, large clods of dirt landing with hollow thuds. As Saya and her family start to leave, she takes one last look at the grave. Célia stands there, clinging to both her daughters. Their weeping is different now, the mutual consolement between parent and child. Franz stands a few feet off, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes.
When he spots Saya, he hesitates, then starts over to her.
She stiffens, expecting another outburst. But when the young man draws near, his tear-streaked face shows chagrin.
"Miss Otonashi," he says, clasping her hands. "Thank you for coming all this way. I hope you can forgive that display—"
Saya shakes her head. "Your mother has every right to—"
"No. We are all fighters in the Mission. But you are foremost. For her to insult you that way—" His young face droops. But he holds his shoulders high. "Please understand. My mother loved my father very much. Worshiped him, really. But she was not a Shield. She and father had problems because she could never make peace with his dedication to the Mission. She would become jealous. Frightened. It was always a point of conflict between them." Quieter, "It's not the sort of life I want for myself."
The message sinks in, whether he intends it to or not.
Saya winces inwardly. A cool wind gusts through the cemetery, slinking along the hem of her dress and curling down her collar. The air is moist with impending rain.
Franz unclasps her hands. Digging into his suit jacket, he lifts out a familiar pocket-watch. The feeble sunlight strikes dull gold splotches off its surface.
"My father's," Franz says. "And his father's before him. The heirloom passed down from generation to generation, alongside the mantel of Joel."
Saya stares at the watch. The rustling of the trees, the indistinct murmur of voices, the twittering of birds, all narrow down to just the soft patina of its surface.
Taking her hand, Franz gently drops the watch into her palm.
"Please," he says. "Pass this on to the next man brave enough to fill my father's shoes."
"Not to you?"
He shakes his head. "Father did his best to keep Red Shield strong. But it was his private life that suffered for it. I never held it against him—he was always good to me. He taught me a great deal. But I cannot use his lessons for warfare. I have no stomach for it." He glances toward the gravesite, where his mother and sisters are huddled. "I can, however, use those lessons to take care of my family."
"Monsieur…"
He backs away, shaking his head. "We all have our duty, Miss Otonashi. This is mine. I hope you will understand." Quietly, "We must learn from the past. Do our part, and do it better."
The words aren't a nod to conventionality, but a reaffirmation of purpose.
His, but also hers.
They say their goodbyes. Franz returns to his mother and sisters. They embrace him, sobbing. A family broken apart by grief—yet still together where it counts.
In her hand, Joel's timepiece is cool and heavy. Her crimes and Diva's seem to mass themselves in its weight, and she can find no sense in them. They are awful, and brutal, and meaningless—a natural disaster too inscrutable to fathom.
A reminder to do better.
The first raindrop brings her back to the moment. A fat droplet bounces off her nose. It is followed by a another, then another. And then the preliminary pitterpatter gives way to downpour, like a soup-pot upended. Everyone in the cemetery is instantly drenched.
Shoving the watch into her handbag, Saya takes off toward the gates. Haji is waiting there. The intent grimness of his face is unreadable. But beneath are all the contradictions that make him hers: wariness, concern, stubbornness, patience. A landmark lost and then found again.
On impulse, Saya catches his hand. He curls their fingers together, squeezing the way he'd done in the church. It is her one consolation of the day. Not a glass half-full, but a fragile lure of hope to cling to.
Like Joel's timepiece.
Like the weight of the vial in her pocket.
Saya's weirdass dream is based at least in part on Tuli Azzameen's The Other Self. Give her stuff (Blood+ and Star Wars) a read if you're so inclined. I promise you'll be in for a treat.